You know how they say ‘the third time’s the charm’? Well, William Oh has a patent with the universe on that. Never try your luck against him more than twice. He’s got a devious mind and floating goat eyes on the back of his head. You will not get the better of him.

Jason Salazar.

Will’s musing was cut off by a rumbling crack at one of the pillars supporting the platform keeping everyone above the mind-affecting fog gave way.

The platform snapped in half right underneath where the priestesses were healing Ash. Unsupported, the two slabs of stone tilted downwards and causing everyone to slide towards the center where the roiling fog waited for them amongst the meat-grinding rubble.

This would kill a lot of rookies.

“No.”

Will seized the terrain and fixed it in place, grabbing the people falling through the broken center out of midair: six priestesses and Marksman’s representative.

Oddly helpless, this man. Will thought as he watched the barely-healed Ash jam his secondary weapon into the stone to catch his balance on the tilting floor. He should be at least in his thirties, shouldn’t he?

At what point am I ‘chaperoning’ and at what point am I just doing everything by myself? Will thought. He certainly could kill all these Maksu fast enough to make these kid’s heads spin. Will just wasn’t sure if his meddling would make the rookies fail their Establishing Quest.

“And I’m back.” Mason said, arriving beside him.

“What’s the word?” Will asked.

“They’ve got a suspicious amount of Relics from old, dead Graneshian priests.” Mason said.

What are the odds that the Maksu discovered an ancient graveyard chock full of powerful Relics of Granesh right when a bunch of priestesses of a rival ideology are at their most vulnerable?

Slim to fucking none.

…This stinks.

“Should we just…” Mason played a mote of fire across his fingertips.

“I think we can salvage this for them.” Will said, pointing into the distance.

The ground sloped upwards in that direction, acting as a natural barrier for the living fog.

“Jason, you think you could keep them from getting confused?” Will asked, turning to the prophet. New orders in the middle of the chaos of battle was a great way for half of them to get killed.

Jason gave a grin and took a deep breath, glanced at Mason and nodded.

“Everyone, top of the HILL!” Jason shouted, his words laced with tinkling mind-affecting miasma that forcibly drew eyes to where he was pointing.

FWOOSH!

A burst of fire lanced out of Mason’s finger and struck their destination, creating a large, obvious signal bonfire.

Will grabbed the ground and wrenched it up, creating an elevated path towards their destination.

“Go, go go go!” Will urged the rookies to retreat, covering their exit himself.

A javelin arced up through the air and Will reached out to snatch it out of the air.

As it approached him, the form wavered, transforming into a golden bolt of lightning.

No.

It wasn’t real lightning, it was a miasma construct, intended to evoke a smiting from Granesh, and that meant it didn’t move as quick as real lightning.

Will coated his hand with miasma and smacked the divine lightning bolt out of the air, exploding the leading edge of the platform, raining stone down on the maksu trying to claw their way up to him.

Will danced back from the ragged edge of the stone and glanced back, spotting the rookies using his path to retreat to higher ground, aiming for Mason’s bonfire.

Time to go.

Will jogged backwards, diverting any ranged weapons that seemed likely to hit himself or his charges.

The rookies charged ahead, forming a decent running order, with the tanks on the outside, the bigger boys shoving maksu off the path while the smaller Climbers focused on not tripping.

Will stopped a tank from falling into the fog and pushed him back onto the path.

With a quick head count, Will was able to relax.

They were on the top of a hill, with nothing but boulders and rocks.

Those are some decent size boulders.

Even as he thought that, Jason led the rookie to start rolling the boulders downhill.

Will jumped in to help, prying a boulder up and shoving it downhill alongside the warriors and tanks.

The archers were shooting slowly, lining up every shot with the most precision they could manage, having become aware of their limited ammunition. They would not get those arrows back.

Will watched as the boulder began tumbling downhill along with half a dozen others, crushing and scattering dozens of the charging maksu.

The low-lying fog struggled to climb the hill, revealing a few of the blue-skinned apelike creatures as they accidentally sprinted ahead of their cover.

The fog struggled, but it began to climb, like a living thing determined to take their minds and turn them them against each other.

“I imagine you guys are tapped out?” Will addressed the earth mages.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I’ve got one charge.” One said. The other shook his head.

“Make us a small barrier.” Will said.

“It’ll be as effective as a line of sandbags.” The earth mage protested, gesturing to his knee-height.

“You’d be surprised!” Will replied, turning his attention to the monsters charging up the hill.

There, far in the back was a maksu with a horn with fog spilling from it as he held it to his lips, lit by the still-burning tent back at their campsite.

Will grabbed the biggest archer he could find.

“That one!” Will said, pointing to the monster. “The one with the horn!”

The archer nodded. His bow creaked from the strain of a man’s weight as he pulled back, loosing the arrow with a HISS.

He must’ve been wearing an accuracy Relic, because the arc of his shot adjusted in-flight ever-so-slightly, landing in the center of the horn-blower.

The fog shuddered in place, twitching like a dying animal before it began to dissipate.

That’s good. Fon’t have to worry about the Fog of War any more.

A knee-height wall of packed earth appeared all around their little group.

“Stay behind the wall, and make them pay when they try climb it! There’s not many left! Break them here!” Will shouted.

Maksu were short, but athletic. Normally they could launch themselves over a barrier half their height without dropping their guard, but they’d been running and fighting for nearly half an hour, and it was beginning to show.

Rather than burst over the knee-height wall, the charging maksu mantled it just awkwardly enough to give the defenders one good hit.

Which made all the difference.

Blue-skinned bodies began to pile up as the warriors gave a deadly blow to anything trying to climb the barrier.

Tanks covered the gaps, shoving maksu back and getting in a few hits of their own while the priestesses formed a circle, secondary weapons drawn as they looked for a better spot.

After a brutal five minutes, a particularly enterprising Makus managed to ward off the attack directed towards his neck and respond with a cut to the rookie’s thigh.

The maksu pushed into the gap, hard, and the line fell apart.

They pulled back to the very top of the hill, forming a wall of bodies as the priestesses got on top of large boulders and tossed head-sized rock down on the attacking troop.

Then after a brief, bloody struggle…it was over.

The force pushing them back faded to nothing as the last living maksu realized their comrades were no longer with them. The two dozen or so blue skinned monsters broke and ran, leaving a tight circle of rookies with their backs to boulders, beaten and bloody.

The sun was beginning to approach the horizon, bathing the world in an eerie gray.

“I thought I might have to step in there for a second! Will said. “Well done! You there, the one bleeding out! Drink this!” Will used Sourdough as he poured the supreme healing potion down the rookie’s throat.

Sourdough.

He was getting great use out of the Ability recently.

“Honestly, they did better than I thought they would.” Mason said, nodding as he scanned the battered rookies.

“By the way, Mason, which one’s your brother?”

“Aaron.” Mason said, pointing to the beleaguered swordsman leaning against a boulder, sword held in a death-grip as the priestesses stitched a wound in his side.

“…Whoops.”

Mason waved him off.

“It’s fine, he’s a prick. More to the point, what are we going to do about what smells like a setup?”

“We don’t know for sure whose setup it is,” Will replied.

“But we strongly suspect, don’t we?” Mason asked.

“You forget about this incident. Getting involved could threaten your neutrality. I’ll go calmly ask some mutual acquaintances a few questions.”

In the meantime…

“Alright everyone listen up! The Maksu have scattered. We’re on the razor’s edge of failing this Quest. Who’s got energy left for a forced march?” Will asked.

Most of the scouts and archers raised their hands, as well as a couple warriors. The tanks in their heavy armor were puddles on the ground, unable to lift a finger now that the danger ad passed.

About half the priestesses raised their hands.

“We gotta go hit the fort before they regroup, otherwise we’re screwed. Anybody who can move, follow me!”

Will turned to Ash. “I’ve got something for ya. I figure you earned it, having nearly lost your head to it.”

Will handed Ash Donovan’s Razor.

“…Thank you, milord.” The swordsman said, bowing as he accepted the sword.

Will nodded and began jogging towards the distant Maksu fort, keeping his pace well within human limits so the tired rookies could keep up with him. The archers refilled their quivers from the corpses along the way as they ran.

Phantom Eye

As he ran, Will created a Phantom Eye and had it follow Ash. Something about the way the man had been fighting as if he were distracted the entire time…bothered Will.

Being wounded and drawn into the center of the platform, then the center of that platform giving out, right where he and the priestesses of Holdna were.

If Will hadn’t stopped it, Ash and the priestesses would have been dumped straight into the fog and almost certainly killed.

Was it bad luck, incompetence, or malice? In short bursts it was impossible to tell, but over the long term the truth would reveal itself.

Especially with a floating eye watching over his shoulder.

Shortly after Will left, Ash organized the remaining rookies, setting a few that could stand on guard while the others rested as best they could.

So far, nothing.

Once he was out of eyeshot, Will manifested a map based on the terrain immediately around the tag he’d placed on Ash, shrunk it down and put it in his ear.

After an hour of jogging, they reached the fort, where the maksu were trickling back into their safehouse.

Will raised his axe and pointed at the fortress, opening his mouth to order the attack.

A few miles distant, Ash rose to his feet and walked around the boulder-riddled hill, happening across a priestess gathering herself, wiping the remnants of tears from her face.

Will watched as Ash confirmed that they were outside of line of sight of the rest of the group, then stalked up behind her.

“In Granesh we find the strength to stand against chaos. Every man must accept their responsibility. Just as his saints Have the burden of guiding us, we must accept guidance.” Ash muttered under his breath as he drew Donovan’s razor.

Will waited until Ash’s arm was raised.

…No.

Will mentally flicked the map with his Aspect cantrip. A pillar of stone erupted between Ash and the priestess, catching the swordsman in the chest and launching him backward into a boulder with stone-shattering force.

Malice it is.

“Um…William Oh?” one of the rookies asked, peering at Will’s vacant expression.

“I gotta take care of something real quick.” Will said, resheathing his tomahawk.

Will stomped on the ground, creating a tidal wave of earth that rolled over the entire fort, churning the majority of the maksu inside into meat-paste.

“You guys clean up.”

Will left a Phantom Eye behind and flew into the air.

“He could do that the whole time?” one of the rookie’s voices managed to reach him just before Will began to outpace sound.

Ash rolled away from the cracked boulder with surprising speed, seemingly largely uninjured.

Will hit him through the map again. And again.

Flick. Flick. Flick, flick-flick-flick-

A white beam erupted from Donovan’s Razor and lanced straight towards the priestess.

“Wha-“

Will sank the ground under her and the beam flew a hair’s breadth over her head.

An instant later, Will’s foot made contact with the spy’s face.

The two of them flew away at outrageous speed, creating a furrow in the ground as gravity reclaimed them.

Will tumbled to his feet and charged forward, the land bursting up behind his feet.

“I never in my wildest dreams though that you, the Deceiver himself would hand me a legendary weapon. The sharpest sword in the legends of Granesh,” Ash said, taking a stance. “There’s no cutting edge superior. You’ll regret tossing this storied blade aside like a cheap drop.”

Will’s eyes narrowed.

“…No.”

I’ve been wanting to try this out.

Will raised his left hand and slammed two charged miasma strings together with a structure behind it, channeling a controlled dimensional ripple

The dimensional ripple propagated forward and bisected Donovan’s Razor, creating space where there was none before.

“I just didn’t need it.” Will said.

With a snarl, Ash tossed the useless handle aside and leapt forward.

The battle was quick, and Ash died a moment later, a relieved expression on his face.

Hmmm.

“He was a spy for the church?” Mason asked, arriving beside Will.

“Maybe.” Will mused. “Something bothers me though.”

“Eh?”

“He knew I could see things from miles away. I did it to scout the maksu in the beginning right in front of him, after all. So why did he play his hand so overtly? Did he forget, did he think I wouldn’t be watching him, or did he not care at that point since his mission was already blown?”

Or…maybe, he wanted me to catch him?

“Hard to parse what a zealot is thinking.” Mason said with a scowl. “Thanks for being here. You probably saved my brother’s life.”

“Least I could do.”